America’s Coming Energy Independence

Via-Commentary

Max Boot

...Thanks to technological developments such as the exploitation of oil shale, the U.S. has become the fastest growing oil producer in the world and is likely to remain that way for a decade or more. Already we produce almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia; soon we will surpass it. Already we have become a net petroleum-exporting country for the first time since 1949; in the future we have the potential to export far more, or to lessen even more our already declining dependence on oil imports..

Tea Party dominance was inevitable -- and I told you so

By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds

I told you so.

On April 15, 2009, as the first nationwide wave of Tea Party protests broke out, I wrote: “What’s most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven’t ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today....

“This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs."

Fast-forward to the present, and the Tea Party movement -- which didn’t really exist until about the time I wrote those words -- is now the single most powerful political force in the nation.

Democratic and Republican politicians alike fear it, and increasing numbers of Americans (including, in recent months, increasing numbers of African-Americans according to a PJTV Tea Party tracking poll) identify with the Tea Party movement and say they are more likely to vote for candidates it supports, and less likely to vote for candidates it opposes.

Even old-line lefties like Stanley Fish are warning Democrats (and Establishment Republicans) that their open contempt for the Tea Party movement is not only blinding them to what’s really going on, but also empowering the movement itself. Fish writes that “The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.”

He’s right, though he’s wrong to think that the Tea Party movement would necessarily do worse if our cultural leaders opened the doors to rational debate: Many Tea Party thinkers are quite knowledgeable and well-informed, while the intellectual leadership of today’s political establishment, in either party, is not exactly first-rate.

If that leadership had been first rate, it would have spotted this phenomenon, or headed it off, a long time ago. Or, you know, not driven us into near-bankruptcy.

Despite my pleasure in saying “I told you so,” I don’t deserve all that much credit. It was easy to see this coming if you paid attention.
Both political parties are out of touch, and ordinary Americans are very unhappy about it, as they watch the Treasury being looted, the economy sink, and the political, journalistic, and financial ruling-class figures escaping the consequences of their ham-handed and self-serving actions.

But while ordinary Americans are mad as hell, this time they really don’t have to take it any more. Institutions have failed them, but Internet tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, and personal tools -- like the cheap handheld video cameras that beat back bogus charges of Tea Party racism again and again -- mean that they don’t have to rely on failing institutions.

As I predicted in my book, “An Army of Davids,” ordinary people have been able to self-organize, to take on big institutions who would rather not listen to them, and win.

For now, Republicans are (sort of) the beneficiaries. Though Tea Partiers aren’t happy with the GOP, they’re much less happy with the Democrats. In this election cycle, Republicans will benefit. But Tea Partiers are also taking over the GOP from the bottom up, running for precinct chairs and state committee seats.

This makes sense: There are barriers to entry for third parties, and it makes more sense to take over an existing party than to start from scratch, if that’s possible.

But those establishment GOP figures who think that they’ll cruise to victory and a return to the pocket-stuffing business-as-usual that marked the prior GOP majority need to think again. This election cycle is, in a very real sense, a last chance for the Republicans. If they blow it, we’re likely to see third-party challenges in 2012, not only at the Presidential level but in numerous Congressional races as well.

For the national GOP, it’s do-or-die time. So guys, you’d better perform -- unless you want me to be writing another “I told you so” column in 2013. And trust me, you don’t.

Why is the Tea Party on a roll?

J.C. Watts

Consider these numbing statistics:

More than 6,000 men and women will be married today and each of their children will be saddled with a $30,000 share of the runaway national debt.

More than 15 million men and women will not be finding a job today.

More than 2,900 families will have their homes foreclosed today.

Some 300,000 illegal aliens will sneak across our borders, underscoring the human, arms and drug trafficking that is destroying the quality of life in Arizona, California and a growing number of other states.

At the same time, during the past two years, an ever-expanding federal government has taken over everything from General Motors to the health care system. And the United States appears weaker on the international stage than at any time since we lost the Vietnam War. As I have said in this column before, our allies don’t trust us and our enemies no longer fear us.

No wonder that a Tea Party movement motivated by patriotism and adherence to the Constitution, as well as opposition to record high tax-and-spend policies, sprang up to challenge incumbent candidates of both parties who are presiding over the decline of our country.

Those Democrats who have been painting Tea Partiers as “crazies” do so at their electoral peril. Republicans should beware, too, if they adhere to an attitude that “yes, we want to take you out, but we don’t want to date you steady and we certainly don’t want to marry you.”

The absurd spectacle of a Democrat subcommittee chairman, backed by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, inviting a comedian to give fake “testimony” and crack jokes during a serious hearing on immigration (as happened with Stephen Colbert recently) is just the latest insult that inflames Americans sick of out-of-touch politicians who fail to address pressing problems.

There is a growing concern, reflected by polling, that the government is taking over the choices that we all once made in life. That explains why a large segment of the independent voters who helped elect President Barack Obama have now abandoned him. A recent Associated Press poll indicates 59 percent of respondents don’t like the way the ruling Democrats are handling the economy. Specifically, the failed “job stimulus” and healthcare policies of Obama, supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, helped drive many people to join or support the vocal Tea Partiers.

Yet, keep in mind that the Tea Party is not Republican, although its supporters will be voting for a large number of GOP candidates this fall. It is an independent, small-government, constitutional movement. Its adherents sincerely believe that all too many elected officials in Washington have evolved from being “representatives” of the people to our dictatorial rulers. This is why I’ve said on many occasions, Republicans or Democrats who ignore the Tea Partiers do it at their own peril.

Interestingly, Republicans who were seen as helping Democrats advance big government and big spending schemes have been defeated by Tea Party-backed candidates in this year’s primaries. Look at the humiliation of Utah’s Bob Bennett, Florida’s Charlie Crist, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Delaware’s Mike Castle— all considered GOP “establishment” types perceived as disrespecting constituents. Then there is Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, who was a longtime Republican before switching parties a year ago, and he still lost Senate re-election.

The Frenchman Jean Jacques Rousseau—14 years before the 13 American colonies revolted against Great Britain in a war to be free— penned a chilling warning coupled with a summation that amazingly describes America’s political landscape today:

“Finally, when the state, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory and formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of ‘public good,’ the general will becomes mute: all men, guided by secret motives, no more give their views as citizens than if the state had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private interest get passed under the name of laws.”

This is a description of the ruination of America, evidenced by the trashing of the Constitution, the dismantling of our private enterprise system, the spending and tax-hike spree and the downgrading of our national security when our president can’t bring himself to publicly utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism” in identifying our enemy.

But the “general will” described by Rousseau is no longer “mute.” There is a nationwide outrage by “We the People” coupled with a love of God, country and the Constitution. It is what spurs the Tea Party to “educate voters” and to fan a political firestorm that has already singed some politicians. Come November, the movement will defeat even more politicians who have a record of tearing down what our Founding Fathers built.

J.C. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com